THE COSMOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS

In this paper the views related to nature, Mother-Earth and the natural environment in the ancient Greek world are discussed, from the Оrphic Hymns and the Homeric world, through the works of Hesiod and Sophocles, and the theories and works of the pre-Socratic philosophers, the Ionian School, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Neo-Platonists, with a particular emphasis on Plotinus. The common elements in the teaching of the pre-Socratic Ionian philosophers and of the latter ancient Greek natural philosophers were the observation of living environment and nature, the corresponding relations, changes and cyclic periodic variations. We note the attempts of Anaximander to formulate the need for the conservation of a dynamical equilibrium in nature and in ecosystems; also, his views on evolution of the leaving creatures and the humans.